


Forelsket

by breaumonts (AnonymousCatastrophe405)



Series: I'll Fall With You [10]
Category: The Royal Romance (Visual Novel)
Genre: Accents, F/M, Falling In Love, First Dates, Holding Hands, New York City, Trains, do not copy to another site
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2020-07-20 01:24:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19983751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousCatastrophe405/pseuds/breaumonts
Summary: “So here we are,” he says, gesturing between them.  “Just us, without security or the court or paparazzi…”“Or Bertrand lurking nearby,” she finishes for him.  It makes him laugh.“How could I forget?  I haven’t been scolded like a naughty child in almost an hour, it’s got to be a record.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Forelsket** \- _(n.) the euphoria you experience when first falling in love_

It’s ungodly early, and it’s Lisette’s favorite time to be in New York. The cabs are just waking up and finding their way to morning fares, the buses are picking up the hungover and the early birds and people with suitcases trying to catch flights, joggers on sidewalks usually too crowded to give them freedom and cyclists zipping by on the bike lanes making coffee runs for overnight office workers. The exhaust smell isn’t strong in Midtown yet, and the morning is a cool, dull gray that feels like it might start flurrying any second.

New York’s dingy, sludgy snow is just about the only part of the city Lisette doesn’t miss, and as much as Cordonia still doesn’t quite feel like home, its winters put any she’s ever experienced here to shame. The electric red and green spectacle of Rockefeller Center just doesn’t compare to the labyrinthine streets of the capitol city and their gilt and glitter.

Maxwell loops his scarf to cover more of his neck as they pause at an intersection near Penn Station, his smile brilliant in the dreariness around them. This is the first time they’ve ever truly been alone. Every moment feels exciting, even standing and waiting to cross the street. 

The streets around Penn aren’t especially pretty or scenic parts of the city. They’re utilitarian and spare compared to the madhouse around Grand Central a few blocks away, but they have their charm the way all of New York City has charm: they’re dirty, they’re populous, they stink, and they’re one of the busiest parts of the city at all hours of the day.

“Which station is this?”

“Penn. Uh, Pennsylvania.”

“Does it only go there?” He doesn’t try to pronounce Pennsylvania, and, a little unfairly, she kind of wishes he would. “How inefficient.”

“It goes lots of places,” she explains. “More places than Grand Central, anyway.”

“Like to Penn – no, you know what? I’m not going to try after all. This language is impossible.”

It makes her giggle; his English is nearly better than hers. The light changes and they’re clear to cross the street with a bored looking business woman in a suit and sneakers and an elderly man and his supremely ugly little dog on a power scooter. Across the street, two young guys in puffy coats loudly bicker about a video game Lisette’s only ever heard of, waving their phones around emphatically. Maxwell’s hand brushes against Lisette’s as she steps off the curb and, like they’ve done it a million times before, their fingers lace together as they cross.

“Come on,” she begs, gripping his arm with her free hand and shaking it emphatically. “I’ve embarrassed myself in Cordonian a million times! I called Bertrand a goat to his face, remember? In front of Constantine? At least try. For me?”

He wrinkles his nose for a moment and exhales hard, his breath visible in the chilly air. “Fine. For you. But only because you asked!” With incredible solemnity, committed to how ridiculously he’s about to butcher the undeserving word, Maxwell says, “Pents-le-anya.”

“Penn _syl_ vania.”

“Pen-see-vana?”

“Pennsylvania.”

“Penzy-vanya.”

Lisette can’t help it: she laughs at him, convinced he’s doing it on purpose. “Maxwell!”

“What? Penzy-vania!” He’s laughing, too. “How is that different than what you said?”

Inside the familiar chaos of the station, Lisette is able to appreciate two things: firstly that it feels, for the first time since they arrived in the city, like she’s truly home, and secondly that she’s not even half the confident, capable traveler she always thought she was. She’d expected to have to lead Maxwell through the concourse and find their train without his help, and really it was her mistake to assume he didn’t know how to get around a city without security doing most of the legwork for him. He hardly glaces at the arrivals and departures before gently directing her towards the right part of the station. 

Maybe it’s because he’s European and that much more accustomed to trains than she is, or because he’s highborn and adept at seeming more sure than he is, but she’s never had a chance to truly appreciate his worldliness before. She tugs at her scarf a bit to hide the goofy smile on her face. 

On the escalator down to their platform, Maxwell glances around and sighs sadly. “It’s not as pretty as Grand Central.”

The gravity with which he says it would be funny if he didn’t sound so incredibly disappointed. 

“I always loved that place,” she tells him. He’s standing one step down from her, slightly shorter than she’s used to him being, and the way he looks up at her makes her stomach flip. “When I was little, I wanted to recreate the mural on my bedroom ceiling. When I first moved here, I used to go and sit to just watch people for hours and make up stories about them all. That’s how I met Day, actually, he was doing the same thing.”

“Do you want to see him before we fly back home?” Maxwell asks as he, like a gentleman, pauses to wait for her step to descend into the floor before setting off towards their train again, swapping their joined hands for hers folded around his elbow so subtly it takes her a moment to realize he’s done it.

“He doesn’t live here anymore.” She misses Maxwell’s hand already, but this is thrilling, too. “He moved to D.C. for work a few months ago. We’ve been emailing since I left the city.”

“I’m glad you’re still in touch,” Maxwell says. “You two seemed close, it would’ve been sad if you stopped talking after everything.”

Lisette smiles to herself. She misses Day terribly, from the tiniest ways to the big ones, like how he folded her socks when it was his turn to do the laundry to how he laughed and how nice it was to get drunk in bed with him and how he let people think he was her boyfriend when he picked her up from late rehearsals. She loves him more than she would a brother, if she had one. 

On the platform, Maxwell takes a moment to reorient himself before heading towards the front of the train. “First class is up here, right? That’s not something this country does backwards?”

“Uh, no, it’s not. But I didn’t order first class tickets, it didn’t seem worth it since we’re on this thing for less than two hours.”

Maxwell slows. “Business, then? We’re going to stand out without shoulder pads and briefcases.”

“No – yes – Maxwell.” Lisette stops, which forces him to stop. “I just got us regular tickets, the no-food-no-luggage kind.”

He blinks, perplexed, and she wonders if she made a terrible mistake for not warning him that he’s being subjected to bargain coach tickets rather than the white-glove service he’s used to as part of Liam’s entourage. It’s not as though she couldn’t have afforded better tickets, but she had been so pleased by him not insisting to pay their way to Philadelphia that she chose the most affordable tickets out of old, atrophying habit. 

“We can upgrade,” she offers, “If you want.”

Maxwell shakes his head, a slow smile spreading across his face. It’s boyish and absolutely delighted by how forbidden this is, at this little rebellion. 

“I’ve always wanted to know what coach is like,” he whispers, like it’s a secret, into her ear to be heard over the cacophony around them. His proximity thrills her, the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand on end and there’s a frisson of something new and exciting tingling in her core as his lips brush against her skin. She wants to turn towards him, pulled in by his warmth and the smell of his cologne clinging to the collar of his coat, but instead she rolls her eyes and nudges him playfully as she steps around him, pulling him along in her wake as she heads for the nearest train car. 

“Come on, you. No gawking, I know you’ve been on mass transit before.”

“Gawking?” The word sounds funny in his mouth, borrowed and poorly understood, overly enunciated with the middle bit blunted by his accent. _Goch-ging._

“Staring, you know, with your mouth open?”

“Ah, right. Yeah, I promise won’t gawk.” The breezy, strange way he says it makes her laugh. “Have you heard that in Spanish they call that catching flies? We call it making a birdhouse.”

“Oh my God,” Lisette giggles as they release each other to navigate the entry into the car’s narrow aisle as they try to find a pair of seats. “Really? Why?”

“Really,” Maxwell says. She glances over her shoulder to watch him open his mouth and mime a bird fluttering to his chin. “ _Ptičje gnijezdo_ , a birdhouse. My father used to say it to me all the time. ‘Stop giving birds a place to nest, Maxwell!’”

He says it in his Bertrand voice as they make their way down the length of the car, stepping over people’s bags and avoiding bumping into anyone already seated. The seats look like they belong on an airplane, faded but cushioned in an ugly yet durable fabric, with seat-back tray tables. They look kind of itchy, and Lisette is once again glad it’s too cold to have any bare skin on them.

Lisette lets Maxwell into the row of seats first before sitting down on the aisle as the train’s intercom crackles indistinctly overhead and the car starts to move. As the train pulls through the darkness under the station, Maxwell brushes a fingertip over the back of Lisette’s hand for her attention, and leans his head back against the seat when she looks at him, a soft and utterly besotted smile on his face.

“So here we are,” he says, gesturing between them. “Just us, without security or the court or paparazzi…”

“Or Bertrand lurking nearby,” she finishes for him. It makes him laugh.

“How could I forget? I haven’t been scolded like a naughty child in almost an hour, it’s got to be a record.”

Lisette lifts the arm rest to turn towards him, tucking one leg underneath herself on the seat, and Maxwell does the same as he tentatively reaches for her hand again, and she takes it as readily as she did on the street earlier, like it’s the most natural thing in the world to do. It might be. It feels like it might be the exact thing their hands were made for. She has to stop looking at him before she bursts into nervous giggles like a teenager. She does it anyway, but at least she’s not watching him do the same behind his hand, pretending he can hide how red his cheeks are getting.

“We’ve never been totally alone before, have we?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

They both go quiet for a minute while they try to think, still musing as the attendant comes by to scan Lisette’s phone for their tickets as the train emerges into Weehawken. Maxwell peers out the window as he tries to take in the drab scenery of northeastern New Jersey, and Lisette leans over to look at it with him, as if she can see it for the first time with his eyes and see something worth remembering outside.

“Is this still New York?”

“Nope, New Jersey.”

“Is all of New Jersey this…” he makes a face as he tries to settle on a polite way to say it, and gestures out the window at the marshy infrastructure outside. “Like this?”

“Maxwell!” She shushes him with a finger to his lips and whispers, “Pretty much.”

He smiles and takes her hand in his. “Well, even though it sucks, I’m happy to be here with you. Even if we’re sitting in coach.”

“Same.” 

He turns back to the window, the early morning light washing the scenery out a bit as it starts to snow. His freckles have faded over the last month or so, and though she kind of misses them, this pale light is sitting on his eyelashes just so and she can’t believe how different her life would’ve been right now if she hadn’t ended things with Liam. She would’ve been swept up in another whirlwind as the future queen and Liam wouldn’t be ruined, but Maxwell would’ve been and she never would’ve forgiven herself.

In this light, he’s exactly the sort of person she always imagined at her side, because he’s that person in every light, and she’d never even realized it until last night. He turns to look at her and catches her staring at him, and he smiles as his cheeks go a little pink.

“Enjoying the view?” he asks, tone amused.

“It’s okay.” Lisette leans her head against his shoulder and pulls their joined hands into her lap. “It’s the company that got my attention.” 

He chuckles and leans his head against hers. “It is pretty great, huh?”

“The best.” They’re quiet again as they both watch the landscape roll by outside for a few minutes, though not for lack of things to talk about – if anything, it’s nice to not feel like they have to talk if they don’t want to. Sitting quietly isn’t something they’re often afforded the luxury of doing together, and the privacy and sense of resolution hanging over them feels accommodating to the quietness. Lisette breaks the lull first. “So, aside from the company and chance to get away, what made you agree to come with me today? I didn’t peg you for the kind of person who’d want to spend a day looking at medical specimens for fun.”

Maxwell hums. “What did you peg me for?”

She resists the urge to make an innuendo out of it, because they have all the time in the world to joke like that now. “I dunno. I guess I figured you’d be a little squeamish about that kind of stuff. You’re so empathetic.”

“So are you,” he counters gamely. “And yet you were going to go to this place alone.”

“I’m not squeamish, though.”

He shakes his head. “Neither am I.”

“Oh no?”

“Nope.” He seems amused by her surprise. “I grew up playing with Olivia, remember? And I love horror movies. Doctor stuff is just really, really interesting, but it’s not gross or shocking. I saw that Bodies exhibition when I was in university and I loved it.”

“Huh.” Lisette sits up and considers him a little differently, and he waggles his eyebrows at her before breaking into a wide grin she can’t help but return. “In that case, there’s another medical museum in England I’d love to go to.”

“Which one? There’s about a dozen.” She gapes a little. “Eh, it doesn’t matter, we’ll see them all eventually.”

“That would be a hell of a honeymoon, huh?”

Maxwell’s eyes are round and his eyebrows are halfway to his hairline, and Lisette feels her face get hot with mingling embarrassment and fear that she just scared the daylights out of him. Hell, it scares _her_ to think about; they’re on their first date, they’ve only kissed twice, and she’s not thinking about marriage at all now that there’s no king about to get down on one knee for her.

It was supposed to be a joke, but it just hangs oddly between them the way those kinds of ‘big picture’ future comments always do when they come up on first dates. 

“Uh.”

“Um.”

“Well.”

“So…” She pulls the first thing that comes to mind and says, “Philadelphia is famous for cheesesteak sandwiches.”

Maxwell shakes his head a little at the sudden change. “What-steak sandwiches? Don’t joke about this, Lisette, here’s a fat kid in me who needs to know what he’s going to eat for lunch, and he’s more serious about this than Drake would be.”

“He’s in for a treat, then.” She pokes his decidedly lean side. “Have you ever even heard of Cheez-Whiz? It comes in an aerosol can like whipped cream.”

“Oh my _God_.” She sees the noble in him is appalled, the fat kid seems into it, and his enthusiasm for novelty is torn between being baffled and open to the experience. Maxwell has to sit back to process it. “This country is terrible. _It’s amazing_. Canned cheese. Holy shit.”


	2. Chapter 2

It’s snowing when they arrive in Philadelphia, just enough to leave a layer of nearly invisible slush on the sidewalk and road and a dusting of white on everything else. It’s early enough they can take their time making the ten minute trek to the museum to avoid waiting for it to open, but late enough that they’ve missed the morning rush. Maxwell quietly marvels at how different this part of the city is compared to New York and Los Angeles, and Lisette does her best to remember her high school history classes to answer his questions. 

Yes, it’s the oldest city in the country. Yes, the Liberty Bell is real and no, they’re not anywhere near it today. Yes, there’s a Ben Franklin museum somewhere, and she doesn’t know if they have any exhibits addressing the conspiracy theory that he was a serial killer. Betsy Ross’s house is here, she sewed the first American flag – no, it’s at the Smithsonian, maybe?, that’s in Washington D.C… yes, where the orange fascist lives. No, this isn’t the Hudson River, no, she doesn’t know what this river is called, no, they shouldn’t ask some stranger for the answer, Americans don’t like to be bothered like that.  
  
It would be exhausting if she was being peppered with so many questions by anyone but Maxwell, but he’s not batting them at her so quickly he’s not giving her a chance to think. There’s just a lot of them, and he’s a curious person, and she has a feeling he’ll entertain himself tonight looking up the answers on his own.   
  
He just wants to hear her talk, and she’s happy to talk. They end up making several laps of the block the museum is on to give her time to get to them all before they approach the gate.  
  
He releases her to step ahead and open the door for her, bowing and waving her through like the hero in a Regency romance. “My lady.”  
  
“Why thank you,” There’s no one around, and even if there was she’d still curtsey with an invisible skirt for him before going inside. He’s at her side again in an instant and she takes his arm as they stop their feet on the doormat together. “Such a gentleman.”  
  
“Only for you,” he says. “Ask anyone, I’m a boor.”  
  
After paying for their admission and picking up some of the literature at the desk, they share another giddy smile and head for the upper gallery. They can look down and see some of the larger permanent exhibits and the sole annex, but the walls on this level detail a fascinating history of tattoos complete with preserved patches of human skin, a wing dedicated to Civil War field medicine and the history of amputations – there’s an interactive exhibit there that reenacts the experience of losing a limb on the battlefield that Lisette can’t stomach finishing and makes Maxwell laugh in what she hopes is fear – and access to a garden of medicinal plants that hasn’t opened for the day yet.  
  
By the time they’re through the Civil War wing, there are other groups milling about. Mostly it’s young pairs and groups roughly their age and middle-aged types who seem desensitized to it all because their bodies are starting to fail them and their loved ones. There are a few families, including one taking a tour where the woman sounds like a doctor and the man seems peaked and preoccupied with keeping their toddler away from the obviously human specimens.   
  
As they read the information about a horrifying and mind-bogglingly huge megacolon, a woman who looks like she’d rather be at a country club takes one look at a body identified as the Soap Lady and collapses in a heap without fanfare.  
  
“Think that happens a lot?” Maxwell asks, barely distracted from his reading about the former owner of the colon.  
  
Lisette watches through the glass display case as a docent in a polo shirt and the doctorly visitor both rush to the woman’s side as her husband says, quite loudly, _For God’s sake, Barbara!_ and fans her with a brochure. She isn’t the only one who has to stifle a laugh at the scene. “Probably. They don’t seem overly pressed by it, anyway.”  
  
Maxwell nods sagely and says, “Is it weird that this is all making me hungry?”  
  
“Extremely, but also? Same.” The doctor’s husband gives them both a concerned look and picks up his toddler, walking hurriedly away towards the more tame display case of a giant skeleton. “What does it say about us that we’re hungry here?”  
  
“That we’d make good vampires?” he suggests. “Or zombies?”  
  
“Vampires are sexier, but zombies are promising if we’d be the _iZombie_ kind.”  
  
“Or hilarious if we’d be the _Shaun of the Dead_ kind.”   
  
“Ooh, I could go for a pint, actually.”  
  
He laughs. “You know what? Me, too. There’s always that association you make with food and certain shows, right? Like there was this show on TV when we were kids that always made me crave hazelnut napolitanka.”  
  
“ _The Aristocats_ made me crave eggnog and Nilla wafers,” she tells him as they wander through the wet specimen room. “And I craved whiskey and greasy hamburgers whenever I watched _Supernatural_ with Day.”  
  
“Ooh, that’s a good one,” he says, grimacing at a something gruesome and unidentifiable at a glance – he flinches away from the tag, which identifies the specimen as cancerous genitalia. “Jesus, okay. That’s officially too much.”  
  
She hooks her arm through his and steers him away from the case, which upon examination is full of similar specimens, some more readily identifiable than others. “Let’s go see if the garden is open and hit the gift shop. I have cramps just looking at these.”  
  
“Same,” he says, allowing himself to be pulled out of the room. He grimaces as they head back up the stairs. “That was the only thing that grossed me out, like… sympathy pains, you know? Those were such a horror show it made my body hurt.”  
  
He steps ahead of her to get the door to the garden. Outside there’s about an inch of wet, powdery snow on the ground and no other guests wandering around. It’s quiet, the noise of traffic almost distant despite it being less than a dozen yards away through one of the garden’s walls, and all the plants are dead. Even in hibernation, even barren, it’s beautiful and peaceful, and they stop to read a few of the plaques.   
  
Maxwell brushes snow off one, and without thinking Lisette takes his hand in both of hers, rubbing at his skin to warm it up again, lifting it to her mouth to blow warm air on it. His face flushes, and she’s not sure if it’s just because he’s cold.  
  
“Thanks,” he says softly.   
  
“You’re welcome,” she replies, just as softly. “We can try to find you some hand warmers before we go to the penitentiary, they won’t have heat there. I don’t want you to freeze.”  
  
“That’s…” He presses his lips together and glances at the door, then back at her. “Can I… can I kiss you? I really want to kiss you right now.”  
  
Her face gets hot. “Yeah, of course. Sure.”  
  
Lisette closes her eyes a moment too soon because she’s too overwhelmed by seeing him lean in, her grip on his hand tightening, and he breathes a little almost laugh right before their lips touch. Maxwell’s lips are thinner than hers, but they’re soft and warm, and his fingers slot with hers between their chests. His nose is cold against her cheek, and he’s wearing that Burberry cologne he knows she likes, and his hand grips hers just a little bit tighter –  
  
They’ve done this before, once months ago at Ramsford and twice again in New York over the last few days, but never anywhere they didn’t worry about getting caught, never in broad daylight, never quite so tentative and chaste. It’s not their first, but it almost feels like it, and why did they ever bother kissing anybody else when it feels this good to kiss each other?  
  
It’s seconds, just enough to make her wish it lasted longer, just enough to make him sway just a little closer for a moment as they part, but not too long to draw attention or discomfort from anyone.   
  
“Mm.”  
  
“Mm,” she agrees.   
  
Maxwell is smiling, she can feel it with her eyes closed. “I could do that all day. Preferably somewhere warm and cozy. Not that this isn’t nice, but…”  
  
Someday she’ll let him know that the soft, private way he’s talking to her makes her insides quake and glow, but today she’s content to keep her eyes closed for just a few moments longer, letting him continue to murmur about where else he’d like to kiss her now that he’s allowed to, and she kisses his knuckles.   
  
“Oh, um.” Lisette looks up and sees Maxwell blushing deeply, and he giggles self-consciously. “No one’s ever done that to me before.”  
  
“Is that okay?” she asks, coyly, sensing what kind of response she’s about to get.  
  
“Very okay,” he says, shifting nervously beside her. “Uh, apparently _extremely_ okay. Okay, I – I think I need a minute?”  
  
Her laugh bounces off the walls of the courtyard.  


—  
  
A quick Google search on the museum’s wifi gets them directions to a place en route to their next stop in the city to get cheesesteak sandwiches, and the city is bustling with more activity than it was several hours earlier when they arrived here even as the snow continues to accumulate around them.  
  
Maxwell reads the menu on his phone as they walk hand-in-hand. “So will it totally ruin the experience if I get one of the other versions of this sandwich thing? Or should I go with the classic style? The canned cheese thing scares me.”  
  
Lisette leans over to see what he’s talking about and shrugs. “That balsamic brie one does sound amazing.”  
  
“That’s what I was thinking, too!”   
  
“I’ll get a classic if you want that one,” she offers, “We can share, so you can try the original and still get something more your speed.”  
  
He looks at her very seriously. “Lisette, this is _all_ my speed. You need to be my impulse control or I’ll get one of everything and ruin the rest of our day.”  
  
“And your stomach,” she adds.  
  
“And my waistline,” he adds. He sighs heavily and pockets his phone. “But do you really want to share? I don’t want to make you feel like you have to for my benefit.”  
  
She pats his arm. “I really, really don’t mind. I probably can’t finish one of these on my best day. Do you mind if I get it with mushrooms and hot peppers, though?”  
  
Maxwell’s eyebrows raise. “What kind of hot peppers?”  
  
She shrugs. “Depends on what they have, but cherry if they have them.”  
  
He nods appreciatively as they come upon the restaurant’s storefront. “I don’t mind that at all.”

Inside, Maxwell orders, loudly over the cafeteria-style partition, after the man on the other side has a hard time hearing Lisette over the din of other patrons. As they shuffle down the line and watch their sandwiches come together, an elderly woman behind them taps Maxwell on the shoulder to ask where he’s from, because she’s never heard an accent like his before, and his reply of “I’ve never heard one like yours, either!” makes her laugh like it’s the funniest thing in the world. He tells her that they’re visiting from Cordinia, which the woman has never heard of, but he doesn’t seem bothered by it and explains, in a very general sense, where it is on a map and that it has a booming tourism industry Americans don’t seem to have caught on to yet.  
  
He winks at her like he’s letting her in on a secret, and she titters like a schoolgirl and pats his arm when they part ways with her, and Lisette’s chest is warm with how happy she is in that moment. How kind he is, how charming, how the woman is still beaming as she takes her to-go order and leaves because he made her laugh.  
  
She watches him size up the monstrosity of a sandwich sitting before him and smiles. “You’re something, you know that?”  
  
“Something good, I hope.” He turns the sandwich around to approach it from another angle, before shrugging out of his peacoat and removing his scarf. “Something about to get incredibly messy from this ridiculous sandwich.”  
  
“Wait!” She picks up half of hers and offers it to him. “Try the classic first.”  
  
He takes it, eyes it, smiles and waggles his eyebrows at her, before taking a bite out of it that gets all over his face and makes her laugh like a lunatic.   
  
“You’ve got a little something,” she says, wadding up a bunch of napkins and reaching across the table to smush them against his face. “Just right there.”  
  
He starts to shake with laughter that immediately makes his face go red with the effort to not choke as she dabs uselessly at his face. He leans against the back of his wrist, the only part of his hand that’s not covered in grease, and eventually regains the ability to speak and gives her her sandwich back to her.  
  
“Going with the big bite first thing wasn’t the best move,” he admits. “But it was so worth almost dying over.”  
  
Lisette pushes her sleeves up. “I knew you’d like it. I could’ve bet on it.”  
  
“That’s the safe bet, anyway. You know I love a good meal.”  
  
“You do give Drake a run for his money.” She bumps her knee against his under the table, and keeps it there against him even as she stretches her leg out under his chair. “What do you think everyone’s up to by now?”  
  
Maxwell hums thoughtfully and takes a moment to eat some of his own sandwich while he thinks. “I bet Hana and Kiara found someplace chic for lunch where everything’s in French and the chef is famous. Drake’s probably slumming it somewhere. Liam might be with him, if he’s feeling up to it and Bastien is pretending to look the other way.”  
  
“You know everyone so well.”   
  
He shrugs. “I guess.”  
  
“What would you be doing if you weren’t here with me?”  
  
“Shopping,” he says immediately, without irony. “For souvenirs for Bertrand and Bartie. Hitting a museum or Central Park or some hip _experience,_ ” he does air-quotes around his sandwich, “And taking pictures. For the ‘Gram, you know.”   
  
She knows. She has no idea how he manages to post so frequently, it’s kind of amazing. He must have another app that schedules updates or something. “Can I ask you something?”  
  
“Always.”  
  
“What are we telling everyone? About us?”  
  
Maxwell sighs heavily and sets what’s left of his sandwich down, pushing at the little basket it came in thoughtfully. “I don’t know. I mean… it’s all kind of sudden, isn’t it? As far as everyone else is concerned?”  
  
Lisette nods and takes a moment to clean herself up some with the too-thin napkins on their table. “I don’t want to hurt Liam more than I already have, you know? This – none of this has been easy or fair to him, and I feel horrible about what happened the other night.”  
  
Maxwell’s expression goes unusually somber and he looks at the table. Under the deceptively shallow image he projects, Maxwell is a complicated creature, full of contradictions and intricate logic she’s not sure anyone will ever truly understand, not even him. She’s not about to ask why he helped Liam with the proposal, and she suspects she wouldn’t get a straight answer out of him to begin with, but she can’t begin to fathom what motivated Maxwell to do it after what happened between them at the UN party.   
  
In the last ten months she’s known him, she’s known Maxwell to go well beyond the call of duty or responsibility at severe detriment to himself and his own self-interest, even when it’s made him miserable.  
  
Lisette reaches across the table to take his hand. “Max?”  
  
It takes him a moment to respond. “I don’t know what we should do. I mean, part of me thinks nothing has to change, everyone who isn’t close to us thinks we’re already together and everyone who is probably already knows you didn’t accept Liam’s proposal. Another part of me thinks we should, I don’t know, be discreet and try to talk to Liam before we go any further than this.” Maxwell’s troubled expression says he’s worried about things other than Liam’s feelings being spared, and he frowns slightly even as he rubs his thumb over her knuckles.   
  
“It’s not as though he doesn’t already know,” she tells him.   
  
“I know,” he sighs, and then he smiles at her, even though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “You know Drake had a thing for you for a while, right?”  
  
“What? No!” She stares at him. “Are you serious?”

“Oh, yeah. It was weird, like, really, really weird. He felt like a creep for lusting after you.”  
  
She shudders. “Lust? Like, he…” she makes an incredibly rude gesture that makes Maxwell laugh loud enough to draw attention from other diners. “He got off to me and still acted like a dick every chance he got? What an _asshole!_ ”  
  
“I could’ve put money on you feeling that way.”  
  
“How did this come up? Was it really obvious and I was just oblivious, or…?”  
  
He shrugs. “He needed to talk about it to someone, I guess. He usually goes to Liam with everything, but since it was kind of about Liam he… thought I was a good substitute? I guess?”  
  
She bumps their knees together. “You’ve proven yourself to be a steel trap for secrets, though.”  
  
“Only when it’s something that matters,” he agrees, “Not inane, manly bullshit like who Drake Walker, Professional Best Friend, beats off to and feels guilty about.”  
  
“But.”  
  
“But?”  
  
“You were doing it, too, right?”  
  
He turns brilliantly red and looks around like he’s expecting someone to be paying them any mind. He’s trying very hard not to smile as he turns his attention back to her. “Is this your usual first date banter or…? What, am I just special?”  
  
She smirks and shrugs, missing innocence by several miles. “That’s not a no, Maxwell.”  
  
“It’s not a yes, either,” he replies as he lets himself grin. “And that’s all I’ll say about it today.”  
  
“Spoilsport.”  
  
He releases her hand and goes back to his sandwich. “You’re as bad as Olivia. Keep being mean to me and I’m going to get a crush on you that’ll make me feel weird when you yell at me.”  
  
Lisette follows his lead. “I had a feeling she was the one you wrote that poem for, and I’m sure her smile is, in fact, effulgent.”  
  
“See, this is why I like you! You understand when no one else does.”  
  
“Should _I_ expect a poem?”  
  
“Several! Some of them might even be good. I lack the earnest conviction I had in my youth, but I still love a good rhyme.”  
  
Lisette picks a piece of onion skin out of her sandwich. “I used to write love letters.”  
  
“Did you really?” There’s no judgement in it, no suppressed laughter at her expense, merely curiosity. “Like with a pen and paper and everything?”  
  
“Mm-hm. I did calligraphy as a hobby for a while in high school, I had all these books of fancy paper and a fountain pen and a wax seal set.” Her favorite part of the set was a brilliant blue wax with a golden shimmer to it that made her think of sunlight on shallow water. She’d never used it, and it’s still packed away with her things at Ramsford, in a little box of keepsakes she’s kept in every bedroom she’s ever had.   
  
Maxwell’s smile, when she looks up, is wistful and a little sad. “My mom did that, too. She’d write little notes for us and stick them places for us to find, like in a book or under our pillows.”  
  
“That’s so sweet.”  
  
“Yeah, it really was. I miss them? And I hadn’t even thought about them until just now.”  
  
Lisette makes a mental note to look up a good place near their hotel to get a nice pen and paper before they fly back to Cordonia on Wednesday. Hana and Kiara might like to come with, and the ladies splitting off for a few hours gives the guys free reign to do something together.  
  
She realizes Maxwell’s finished his sandwich, probably to combat the swell of emotions they accidentally conjured up, and he’s looking at her half-eaten one.   
  
“I was going to ask if you wanted fries,” he says. “So I don’t feel awful getting an order for myself.”  
  
“Oh, uh, I’ll pick at them, yeah.”  
  
He smiles and gets up, but not before he dips and presses a kiss to the top of her unsuspecting head as he passes her. The suddenness shocks her, but it also makes her twitterpated and giggly as she swats at his hip before he’s too far away to reach. She turns to watch him get back on line and feels herself smiling, wide and foolish, at how happy she is, and when Maxwell turns to glance back at her, he’s wearing the same expression.  



End file.
